Drivers of vehicles, such as cars, may need to control several components of the vehicle for purposes of safety, comfort, or utility. As a result, vehicles typically have several controls to control one or more components of the vehicle. Some common controls in vehicles may include, for example, radio controls to set tuning or volume, heater controls to set the level of heat, and defroster controls to set the level of defrosting of windows of the vehicle.
Oftentimes, conventional controls on vehicles may be organized in clusters. For example, passenger cars may have a center console between the driver's side and the passenger's side within the cab at the front of the car where several control surfaces and interfaces are placed. Controls for the radio, navigation system, heater air conditioners, and other components are often provided on the center console.
The center console, in many cases, may be crowded with controls due to the large number of components in modern vehicles that need to be controlled or otherwise require user interaction. Oftentimes, the center console may extend from the dashboard of the vehicle at its top to the transmission tunnel at its bottom to fit all the controls required on the vehicle. Some locations on the control panel may be more convenient and safer for a driver to reach than other locations on the control panel. Current center consoles, furthermore, have controls that are fixed in place. In other words, a particular control is set in a particular location on the surface of the center console of the vehicle. The location of controls on the vehicle are typically preconfigured by a party other than the end user, such as the vehicle manufacturer. Therefore, a vehicle manufacturer, to provide the most convenient location for each of the controls, may try to anticipate the most frequently used controls and try to place the most frequently used controls in locations that are most convenient to a user. Although vehicle manufacturers may try to make control clusters, including the center console, within the vehicle as user friendly as possible, it may not be possible for the vehicle manufacturer to provide a control interface configuration that is to every end user's convenience.
Current control clusters, such as the center console, may not be easy modify terms of adding additional control infrastructure. For example, if one wants to add control functionality of one's smart phone to a vehicle control surface, it may be difficult to do and may involve providing new control interfaces and wiring to enable the additional functionality.
Typical control clusters and control surfaces on vehicles generally have a switch or other user input interface electrically coupled to electronic device, such as a controller, via wiring to determine the switches or interfaces that are being actuated and translate the same to a controllable function. Therefore, each control interface of the vehicle may have dedicated wiring or dedicated controller hardware. As such, the controls may be difficult to reconfigure and personalize. Furthermore, the controls and associated hardware add weight to a vehicle, which is undesirable, and may be expensive to implement due to considerable dedicated electrical infrastructure provided therefore. Additionally, repairs to vehicle controls may be relatively difficult as the repairs may require troubleshooting the electrical infrastructure associated with each of the controls.